Page 36 of Spring's Arcana
She knew what she was going to ask—the one question she could never, ever voice, the one her mother would never forgive. It slipped between her teeth, bolting like a runaway horse. “My father,” she said, desperately. “Where’s my father?”
Between the popping, the groaning, the creaking, and the shattering, the sorcerer’s laugh tiptoed.Are you sure you want to know?that chuckle said, and Nat’s right fist jumped up, pistoned out.
The mirror to her right shattered. It hurt, but the pain was a sweet clean jolt. Her other fist leapt free too, and left a bloody print in the center of a star of breakage. “You’ll show me everything,” she said, and it was Mama’syou do not know who you are fucking with, sirvoice, filling her throat and streaming free like a spring stormtearing through tossing branches weighted with new growth. “Or so help me, I willendyou.”
The mirror down the leftmost passageway lit, blazing with pitiless white. Nat looked, her eyes growing rounder, and she recognized that table, the chairs, the thick white china mug of hot chocolate with the chipped rim—
A terrific crack speared the picture, shivering it from top to bottom. Glass fell, crashing musically, and Nat let out a miserable little cry. Her bloody fists leapt up as she ducked, bare arms over her head a pathetic shield against flying shards. Little razors kissed her bare skin, almost painless as the sting waited to creep up catfoot, and she had wasted her one question asking something she did, after all, know the answer to deep down, in the most secret places of her aching, pounding heart.
MISBORN THINGS
Each of the creatures in the garage turned into hideous, bubbling scrap by the hatred wedded to Dima’s bullets was a stab to Koschei’s prestige; energy the Deathless poured into his dolls could not be renewed, only laboriously gathered afresh. Dmitri worked his way up, floor by floor—the stairwells were hidden and more often than not turned into greased slides, but his boots gripped well and he found each camouflaged door.
Nothing better than a thief for that particular task. Everything hidden, everything of value gloated over by a miser late at night, everything treasured, was all within his purview. Or, at least, the finding was, and what did you do once you had found it?
Only what was natural. Only what you were meant to, what you had been made for.
He ascended from parking garage to anonymous building-layers masquerading as offices, glass doors shattering and cubicles exploding with particleboard, paper, shards from tiny crouching mimic-goblins, sparks from electrical snakes hidden in the walls. The straight razor flickered, the gun roared, and Dima sang, hopping over a trap disguised as a secretary’s desk and shooting a skittering gremlin chirping about rates of return. A large rectangular taupe plastic thing masquerading as a printer waddled towards him, rumbling a deep chthonic curse he stepped mincingly aside to avoid; he kicked it and his silvered boot-toes did as much damage as the countercurse he spat in a language from the banks of a dying river under a smoke-choked sky, a former incarnation’s knowledge rising from the buried past.
The only really troubling parts were the pseudo-bathrooms. It just wasn’t right for urinals to make that noise.
Past the office floors the terrain changed. Now it was apartments, blank doors on either side of indifferently lit halls with cheap nylon carpeting that turned to mush dragging at his soles, the smell of fatty food burned on hot plates rising choke-thick, the doors taffy-stretching until the straight razor slashed and they screeched, flapping open and cringing. Behind each one was a different stage set, some with the deadly quiet of carnivorous traps and others with howling violence lurking behind lumpen furniture.
This was mere foreplay. Above, it would become much more interesting. Koschei’s mightier clockworks were kept closer to the nest, and now the poking, prying little bastard knew he had a guest. He would be hurrying to do whatever he could to the Drozdova, but she was a tough little nut, resistant to cracking.
Dima could admit as much, even as it irritated him enough that he missed a single strike at a lumbering beast built to look like an ancient Frigidaire. Which meant he had to shoot it twice; as he did so a lamp-shaped thing with a conical cream plastic shade wrapped its cord around his ankle and bit, burning his calf through Italian wool.
Helikedthis suit. Dmitri roared a curse and kicked the thing, sending it skittering into a corner with a shower of venomous green sparks. Bad enough that Koschei aped his betters, but the man had no creativity.
Dmitri found the escape from this particular floor and raced up concrete steps lit by angrily buzzing fluorescents, bursting out into a long gallery of glass rectangles arranged in rows. Each case held a wrapped cocoon, varying shapes and sizes swelling or deflating as the things inside accreted towards birth or failure. The former Koschei would probably keep.
The latter were simply released to hunt wherever his domicile happened to be perched, bringing home prey to add to the sorcerer’s numinous force. Dima showed his teeth in a wolf’s grin, though wolves—unlike humanity—did not destroy merely for the joy of it. The gun barked in his hand, his boots flickered, and he leapt fromcase to case, spreading fractals under his stamping heels. Falling glass shivered, and he heard a high tinkling echo from above.
Now what do you suppose that is?
The linen-husked things screamed as their safe little hutches were broken and the inimical outside flooded in. It was to be expected; only the strong survived in this world.
“Bastard,” a lipless voice thundered through the long wood-floored room. “What the fuck are you doing, Konets?”
It spoke in the language of the old country, and Dima’s hatred turned bright as the straight razor in his left hand, still innocent of any stain. It took practice and skill to carve without smirching yourself.
He shattered the last case, pausing to concentrate. The gun accepted its silencer; from here, the work would be quiet. He used the moment to listen to the painful piping cries of the misborn things; maybe Koschei could salvage a few once Dmitri had what he wanted.
But maybe not.
The entrance to the next level was cut into the popcorn ceiling, and it throbbed with sorcery. Koschei’s voice rose in a chant far above, and that shiver-tinkling sound of breakage kept going though Dima had demolished every case on this floor.
He pursed his lips, whistling a high drilling note, and coiled himself to leap.
SEE SOME THINGS
Broken glass glittered everywhere. White surgical light foamed over Nat in a stinging wave. There was a clattering, a low male grunt of effort, and two short pops.
“Oh, really?” the low, dry, smooth voice of the sorcerer said, and his tone was so prosaically aggrieved she almost opened her eyes again. “Shooting me, Konets? Have you no—”
Next came a swish and a terrible throaty gurgle. Nat let out a small helpless sound, her stinging arms still clasped over her head. A hot droplet touched her cheek.
Like a child awake after a nightmare, she was afraid to look in case it was real.
